Record of Grancrest War / Grancrest Senki

"On the continent Atlatan threatened by demons from another dimension called Chaos, the nobility fought back using Crests, which gave them superhuman powers. However, rather than join forces to end Chaos, the nobles instead fought each other to gain more Crest powers and lands. The story focuses on Siluca Meletes, a young mage who scorns the feuding lords for abandoning their people and Theo Cornaro, wandering knight and Crest holder who is trying to liberate his hometown from its tyrant lord. Joining forces, Siluca, Theo and their allies fight together to end the wars between the nobility and end Chaos."

From the creator of Record of Lodoss War comes this fantasy story that feels like someone novelized Fire Emblem. There's an anime running at the moment which got off to an unfortunate rocky start as it's trying to cram the entire 10-volume series into 24 episodes, but it's since bloomed into one of the most entertaining anime I've seen in ages and I'm incredibly curious about the source material.

@shrike_al Haha, but that's part of the genius! Any art that can get that sort of reaction, where you feel horrible because you're too invested, that's pretty awesome. I watch the show with my boyfriend, and we're both such romantics that we couldn't stop raving and ranting for -days- after that episode. But then there's a fantastic payoff in

I too have been enjoying the anime and would love to read the novels. Unfortunately it's from Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. I guess we've had a couple of licenses now from them: Yen On's Do You Like You Mom? and Seven Seas' True Tenchi Muyo novels. We can only hope these pave the way for more novels to come from the label.

@raddevlin It's quite different from Lodoss though. Most of the guys I know who watched this because of Lodoos all had their expectations betrayed. It takes some getting used to. But for what it is, Grancrest is pretty good.

@shrike_al Hmm, well I wouldn't say I really have any expectations other than a certain level of quality so that's probably less of an issue to me - I'd still like to check Grancrest out. Still, thanks for the heads up!

This is the series I have been dying to read. Now that J-Novel has started publishing light novels from Kodokawa (Amagi Brilliant Park is published by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko (Fujimi Shobo) the same magazine as Grancrest) it may have a chance to get a license.